ASUS ProArt PQ22UC 4K OLED Monitor: £4699, ~$5150
by Anton Shilov on March 22, 2019 5:00 PM EST
ASUS announced its first professional OLED display back at CES 2018 over a year ago. The compact and lightweight 21.6-inch 4K monitor covering 99% of the DCI-P3 color aimed at professionals attracted a lot of attention from various parties, but it has taken ASUS quite some time to perfect the product. Only this month the company began to sell the display on select markets with broader availability expected going forward. Meanwhile, the price of the monitor looks rather overwhelming.
The ASUS ProArt PQ22UC features a 21.6-inch 4K RGB stripe OLED panel produced by JOLED using its printing method. The panel supports a 3840×2160 resolution, 140 - 330 nits brightness (typical/peak), a contrast ratio of 1,000,000:1, and a response time of 0.1 ms. The monitor features an internal 14-bit 3D LUT (lookup table), can reproduce 1.07 billion colors, and comes factory-calibrated to a Delta E <2 accuracy. The ProArt PQ22UC is said to feature a 95% uniformity compensation to avoid fluctuations in brightness and chromaticity on different parts of the screen. ASUS says that it can cover 99% of the DCI-P3 color space (without specifying whitepoint chromacity) and supports HDR10 as well as HLG formats for high dynamic range content. Meanwhile, ASUS yet has to reveal which other modes the display supports (e.g., REC2020, REC709, etc.).
Besides very accurate colors and a very high contrast ratio, the main features of the ProArt PQ22UC are its compact dimensions, a foldable stand, a foldable protection case, as well as a low weight (about a kilogram or so with the stand). To further save space and make the product thinner, ASUS equipped the the ProArt PQ22UC with two USB Type-C and micro-HDMI inputs (no word on exact protocols, but DP 1.2 and HDMI 2.0x are likely). The compact dimensions and weight enable owners to easily carry it around, which is particularly important for people who need to do post-production outside of their studios as well as various on-set routines. ASUS does not ship the monitor with a light-shielding hood, a common accessory for displays used for cinematography and color-critical workloads, due to its portability.
| Brief Specifications of the ASUS ProArt PQ22UC | |
| PQ22UC | |
| Panel | 21.6" OLED |
| Native Resolution | 3840 × 2160 |
| Maximum Refresh Rate | 60 Hz |
| Response Time | 0.1 ms (black to white) |
| Brightness | minimum: 0.0005 cd/m² typical: 140 cd/m² maximum: 330 cd/m² |
| Contrast | 1,000,000:1 |
| Viewing Angles | 178°/178° horizontal/vertical |
| Pixel Pitch | 0.1245 mm² |
| Pixel Density | 204 ppi |
| Display Colors | 1.07 billion |
| Color Gamut Support | DCI-P3: 99% sRGB/Rec 709: 100% (tbc) Adobe RGB: ? SMPTE C: ? Rec2020: ? |
| Stand | Tilt and height adjustable |
| Inputs | 2 × USB Type-C (DP 1.2?) 1 × mini HDMI (2.0a? 2.0b?) |
| PSU | External |
| Launch Price & Date | Spring 2019 €5000 ~ $5000 |
The ASUS ProArt PQ22UC display is now available from select stores in Austria and the UK for €5,160 and £4,699 with taxes. TFTCentral claims that broader availability is expected in April, but the official price for the UK will be £4,799 with taxes. If we roughly subtract the UK sales tax from the current retail price and convert the sum to US Dollars, we will get something like $5150, which means that the product will likely carry a ~$5000 MSRP in the US.
Related Reading:
- ASUS Unveils ProArt PQ22UC OLED Monitor: 4K, 99% DCI-P3, 0.1 ms Response Time
- JOLED Demos 21.6-Inch OLED Monitor for Gamers
- Dell at CES 2019: Alienware 55-Inch 4K 120 Hz OLED Gaming Monitor Showcased
- New 8K OLED Displays for Tablets and Laptops: 8.3 and 13.3 Inches
Sources: TFT Central, AVMagazine
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Beaver M. - Sunday, March 24, 2019 - link
Nice try at being a jerk.There are no such problems. The stuff you mention is normal wear and tear. Nothing that happenes even remotely as quickly as burn in in OLEDs.
There is a long term test of OLEDs on rtings.com. After just 2 weeks they developed burn in. And its not that when you turn off the display, that it will somehow heal. LG says themselves that its a cumulative effect. 2 x 30 mins is 1 hour.
The verdict is that static items are still a huge problem for OLEDs. End of discussion.
BenSkywalker - Monday, March 25, 2019 - link
It's normal wear and tear on LEDs because reasons...?I've been following rtings tests, largely because I knew certain people wouldn't comprehend what the tests were showing. As an example there was a person in this thread that use those tests to try and say red sub pixels were more problematic than blue based on a panel that uses neither.
You know what other display technology could get burn in? CRTs. If you set up a torture test comparable to theirs you would get burn in after a certain amount of time.
The verdict was actually under anything close to normal use you won't have a problem, not my verdict, what they have been saying.
Even then, my test has been running three years without issue under normal use.
By the way, the tv "healing" itself is from image retention which is a temporary version of burn in. That is something that is exponentially more common than actual burn in.
lilkwarrior - Friday, March 29, 2019 - link
rtings.com were extreme, boneheaded edge cases that no average joe would do. After all, you're trying your best to burn in the screen.Just like how you don't treat a Ferrari/Tesla like a Civic, you don't use a professional monitor using premium material carelessly. I've used OLED TVs & monitors for half a decade and have friends in the medical industrry w/ no issues for even longer as ancedotal evidence.
- Have a screensaver
- Autohide taskbars & status bars; for pros it's a no-brainer anyway to maximize real estate
- OLED monitors have modern pixel shifting and even some turn-off if you walk away
melgross - Monday, March 25, 2019 - link
Burn in is a big problem. For someone who used specific software on a regular basis, 5 days a week, week after week, burn in is goi g to be there. Menus are in the same place. Many other UI objects are in the same place. These will burn in readily.And with a such a low brightness, it will be turned up.
Gunbuster - Monday, March 25, 2019 - link
For $5000 they should at least make you a windows utility for "professionals" that goes and rearranges app toolbars and the moves the windows taskbar around at random. ;)awehring - Saturday, March 23, 2019 - link
No word on hardware calibration?For a professional device, that probably has color-shift over time, it's a must.
Interesting, that they use a printing technique to produce the OLED panel. The first market ready application I have heard of. The technique has the potential to make large OLED displays cheap.
For those who compare the price with OLED TVs: These are not suitable for static content because of burn-in.
awehring - Saturday, March 23, 2019 - link
Btw: professional displays for cinematographers are about ~25'000 $.So this product has a good price for its sice.
sonny73n - Saturday, March 23, 2019 - link
So if this monitor $5k, it probably has 1/5 of the “sice” of the $25k one you mentioned. You remind me of the app called “I am rich” from the AppStore with $999.99 price tag. Unbelievably, seven people purchased it. The 8th (last) was a kid who bought it using one of his parents’ account. His parent called Apple, Apple refunded and took down the app. That app was useless but this monitor actually has some use which might justify the $5000 price tag for some rich dumbass. And according to you, it’s a good deal.Some people’s stupidity is way beyond my imagination.
dropme - Saturday, March 23, 2019 - link
Professional monitors are usually pretty expensive because they are made for "professionals" such as X-ray inspector, cinematographer, not us the average users. And if this monitor works like a charm, its price is somewhat reasonable. By the way Joled will start mass production of the oled panel in a year so it's safe to say that this price tag is not permanent.haukionkannel - Saturday, March 23, 2019 - link
Do you make print commercial where every color has to be exacly right? You set 20000 for each picture/photo/poster you make or more?No... that is what I think Also. This is for pro photo editors. Where extreme accurasy is essential. You can get good monitors for fraction of this price, but if you want to get the best of the best... wel you have to pay for it.
This is not something that you recommended to your grandma for Main monitor to read emails, but you can recommended to this for someone who makes money by producing some material to big company that is going to be printed to paper later, or those $25000 monitors mentioned above.